State Sen. Joe Negron is confident he can get federal approval for his plan to provide health insurance to low-income Floridians as an alternative to an expansion of Medicaid.

“We are well within the boundaries of what’s permissible,” the Stuart Republican told this newspaper in an interview about his proposal. “It wouldn’t make sense to pursue a plan that’s destined to failure.”

It’s a high-risk maneuver. If the plan is not approved by federal authorities — as well as from state House and Senate colleagues and Gov. Rick Scott — the state could lose billions of dollars in federal assistance and about 1 million uninsured residents might lose health coverage they would have gotten if the Medicaid expansion had occurred.

Negron is banking on federal approval to use Medicaid revenues — an estimated $51 billion over 10 years — to help low-income Florida residents not currently eligible for Medicaid purchase private health insurance. Many of those are the working poor who can’t afford to buy health insurance on their own and who make too much to be eligible for Medicaid.

Negron has also said he believes the state’s cost of such a program would be less than the $3.5 billion estimated the state would have to pay for Medicaid expansion over the next decade.

The Treasure Coast senator unveiled his plan after a committee he chairs rejected expansion of the state-federal Medicaid program. The state House had earlier also rejected expansion. The governor has said he would go along with Medicaid expansion for three years — the period during which the federal government would pay the full cost of expansion.

Negron’s proposal also calls for participants to have a co-pay based on income. Other than for the very poor, the co-pay would be similar to what others covered in the private market now pay.

He has also suggested that the state’s Healthy Kids program — which he described as a “well-run, efficient program” — be used as the framework for administering his proposed option to Medicaid expansion.

Negron and his staff have spent a lot of time talking to federal and state health agencies in developing his alternative to the optional Medicaid expansion part of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Still, if his plan does not get the go-ahead from the Legislature and the governor as well as from federal authorities — or if the plan doesn’t work as envisioned — Florida residents could suffer the consequences.

With strong Republican opposition to Medicaid expansion in the House and Senate, there appears to be no fall back position.